Armando Rodríguez Carreón

El Diario de Ciudad Juárez

November 13, 2008, in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico

An
unidentified assailant gunned down Rodríguez, 40, as the veteran crime reporter
sat in a company sedan in the driveway of his home. Rodríguez’s eight-year-old
daughter, whom he was preparing to take to school, watched from the back seat.

Rodríguez
had told CPJ that he had been receiving threats and that intimidation had
become routine in the violent border city. “The risks here are high and rising,
and journalists are easy targets,” Rodríguez told CPJ. “But I can’t live in my
house like a prisoner. I refuse to live in fear.” Days before he was murdered,
Rodríguez had written an article accusing a local prosecutor’s nephew of having
links to drug traffickers.

In July
2009, the lead federal investigator working on the Rodríguez murder was shot to
death. His replacement was murdered less than a month later. In an April 2010
interview with The Texas
Tribune, an
online news outlet, Juárez Mayor José Reyes Ferriz said there were no leads or
suspects in the case.